


Felicity Smoak and the Five Stages of Grief

by JoMarch



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, after all he won't stay dead for long, totally canonical character "death"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoMarch/pseuds/JoMarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Felicity Smoak believes in math.  This is how she knows Oliver isn't dead.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Felicity Smoak and the Five Stages of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Anything through _The Climb_ is fair game.
> 
> Disclaimer: These characters belong to DC Comics and Warner Brothers. However, considering the amount of money I’ve spent on DC Comics over the years, the least they can do is let me play with their characters for a while.
> 
> Thanks: to Macha, for being the perfect beta she always is. And for making me watch this show and fangirl with her again. To quote Paul Newman in my favorite movie, "We're back in business, boys and girls! Just like the old days!"

Denial:

Felicity Smoak believes in math. Numbers, she learned at an early age, are elegant things that can help explain the workings of the universe. She has a vague childhood memory of riding in the car singing along as her father taught her the words to that old _Schoolhouse Rock_ song—“Three Is a Magic Number.” Her father is long since gone, but his legacy is a belief in the magic of equations and statistics. Any problem, she knows, can be turned into an equation. And that equation, in turn, will solve the problem.

This is how she knows that Oliver isn’t dead.

The problem is simple: She needs to know when Oliver will return to Starling City. There is no need to start mourning if it’s too soon to expect him back. So she lists the factors in her equation:

1\. The amount of air travel time involved (factoring in weather delays and possible equipment malfunctions).

2\. Any additional travel time—because this whole fight-to-the-death thing isn’t likely to be held near an airstrip.

3\. The climb up the side of what she’s sure is a very scary mountain.

4\. The actual fight. (Add in time for any accompanying ceremony—there’s something about the name “League of Assassins” that leads Felicity to assume there will be rituals of some kind involved—maybe a nice cup of tea before everyone starts killing one another.)

5\. Any complications arising from the outcome of the fight. (Again, it’s the name that concerns her. The League of Assassins doesn’t sound like the kind of people who would respond to the death of their leader with a shrug and a pleasant “have a nice day” in farewell.)

6\. The climb back down the mountain. (She makes a note here to factor the weather in both here and going up the mountain.)

7\. Travel—land and air—back to Starling City.

She runs the figures and concludes that Oliver will be home by New Year’s Eve.   
Possibly sooner, but there’s certainly no reason to worry yet.

Math doesn’t lie.

She spends every moment she can at the foundry, checking news feeds, running facial recognition programs, basically doing anything she can think of to get a lead on Oliver’s condition and his whereabouts. She tries to ignore Diggle’s look of concern, his gentle admonitions (“Felicity, don’t get your hopes up,” “Felicity, go home and get some rest”) because, after all, Diggle’s at the foundry too. And he’s there, just like she is, on the off chance that Oliver will find a way to get in touch with them.

She knows that Diggle’s not ready to give up on him either, so they’ll wait together. As long as it takes.

Anger:

It’s nice of Ray Palmer to give his employees some extra time off at Christmas. It would have been nicer if he’d remembered that some of his employees are Jewish and could have used the extra time off at during Hanukah, but you take what you can get.

What Felicity gets is five days in Vegas. A treat for most people, sure, but not for someone who practically grew up in a casino.

She calls Diggle and Roy four or five times a day and spends the rest of the time avoiding her mother’s barrage of questions. Most of these questions, of course, have to do with Oliver. And with Ray, which as far as Felicity is concerned isn’t even an issue, given what Oliver said right before he left. Not that Oliver ever intends to act on what he said because he’s determined to be just that noble and self-sacrificing. 

She’s not in the mood for seeing the sights in Vegas; she’s been there and she’s done that many times before. So she mostly sits in her mother’s apartment, getting irrationally upset about Donna Smoak’s lack of housekeeping skills. How does the woman live like this? Why are there so many dirty dishes in the sink? Why does she have that threadbare rug they bought in 1988? Why is her mother using a two-year-old phone bill as a bookmark in an issue of _People_ from last June? Why is there an old issue of _People_ on the coffee table anyway?

Oh. Of course. Because there’s an item about Oliver Queen in the old issue of _People_.

Does her mother think that Felicity’s entire life revolves around Oliver Queen?

Why _does_ Felicity’s entire life revolve around Oliver Queen anyway?

She feels proud of herself for getting through her vacation without blowing up at her mother (mostly because she puts her excess energy into cleaning Donna’s house), but she’s still simmering by the time she gets back to Starling City. She doesn’t like the concerned looks Diggle and Lyla give her when they pick her up at the airport; in fact, she would swear that even baby Sara is looking at her with pity. Felicity tries to ignore the possibility that Diggle’s given up on Oliver ever coming back.

Felicity goes back to work on Dec. 29 only to discover a poinsettia on her desk, compliments of Ray. “Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year,” the card reads. She takes the plant to Ray’s office, slams it down on the desk (potting soil flying in every direction), announces “I’m Jewish,” and storms out.

Ray follows her back to her office (a space that she still thinks of as belonging to her and Oliver) and apologizes profusely. By this time, Felicity is feeling guilty. After all, Ray meant well and it’s not his fault that Felicity’s world is starting to fall apart. So she says yes when Ray asks her out to dinner as a belated Hanukah present. Dinner with Ray becomes an extended soliloquy on the subject of his lost love and will he just stop talking about Anna for two minutes? He’s not the only person who has ever lost someone and maybe if he listened half as much as he talked he’d learn that.

She immediately feels guilty. And glad that, for once, she didn’t say any of that out loud.

It’s not that she doesn’t feel his pain. She feels it all too clearly. But why can he not see that she has her own loss to deal with.

And suddenly she is overwhelmingly mad at Oliver. Like, if Oliver was at this table, she would scream bloody murder at him. It’s all his fault, after all, the crappy way she’s feeling and the way she’s been directing her anger toward Ray and her mother. What kind of self-sacrificing jerk says he loves you when he’s planning to go off to die? Who _does_ that? “Felicity, I love you. But apparently not as much as I love my lying half-sister, who prefers being the daughter of a mass murderer to flying coach like a regular person. And now that I’ve made sure you won’t give your heart to some nice guy like Barry or Ray, I’ll just take myself off to die for someone else’s crime.”

Yeah, well, fuck you very much, Oliver Queen!

Denial Redux: A Brief Interlude

People don’t fall off the face of the earth. Not in this day and age. It just doesn’t happen. 

And the odds of the same person disappearing twice in one decade? 

Astronomical.

Math doesn’t lie.

So on New Year’s Eve, the day that Oliver absolutely will be home, Felicity takes a spa day. She gets a facial, a manicure, a pedicure—she even treats herself to a massage to ease some of the tension and hostility out of her body. Then she puts on her best dress and she goes to the foundry.

Math doesn’t lie. Oliver will be there.

At 12:01 a.m., January 1, 2015, Felicity Smoak accepts the fact that Oliver Queen is dead.

Bargaining:

Math doesn’t lie.

Mathematicians, on the other hand, can make mistakes. 

So, while the Rose Parade plays in the background, Felicity sits on her couch and runs the numbers just one more time. “Because, God,” she thinks, “you made my father go away and you made Cooper leave and then you turned him into someone I never would have recognized, and I think you owe me just this once. So let’s make a deal, okay? Just this once?”

The answer comes back in terms of the same result: If Oliver isn’t back on New Year’s Eve, Oliver isn’t coming back.

“Okay, God,” she tries again, “whatever you want, it’s yours. Let Oliver keep playing hero and have a nice celibate life or only sleep with women he doesn’t love and who aren’t me and I won’t complain. He wouldn’t even have to come home in perfect shape. A few scrapes, some new scars, even a broken bone or two. Whatever you want. Just let me be wrong about this. Just don’t let him be dead.”

God, apparently, isn’t interested in making any deals with Felicity Smoak.

Depression:

She calls in sick to work and spends the next few days holed up in her apartment. She’d probably forget to eat if Diggle didn’t come by periodically, bringing pizza and baby Sara. She smiles as much as possible and coos at Sara, because she doesn’t want the baby to develop some sort of complex because Aunt Felicity marred her formative years. Diggle tries to talk about Oliver and she sees what he’s doing; he wants her to concentrate on the good stuff (and she knows there was so much good stuff), not on Oliver’s death. But she can’t do that yet. There’s this gaping hole in her life where Oliver should be, and she can’t seem to think about anything else. 

Besides, it was all her fault; she realizes that now.

She let him go alone. She could have made at least part of the trip with him. She could have set up some kind of communication relay; she’s the one who’s supposed to be the computer genius, after all.

She could have set things up so that he could hear her. She could have been whispering into his ear like always, giving him an incentive to survive.

He could have died hearing her say she loved him.

Acceptance:

Now that the holidays are over, people have started noticing that the Starling City vigilante isn’t around. “Where is the Arrow?” the talking heads on TV start asking. Captain Lance calls to ask her if she’s talked to “their friend” lately. (All she says is no, but there must be something in her voice that gives the truth away since the captain says, “I’m sorry” with the same tone of sympathy she imagines him using if he were talking to Laurel or Sara.)

Laurel, of course, wants to know where Oliver is. Felicity, of course, can’t explain without implicating Thea in Sara’s death, so she just tells Laurel to talk to Diggle. She never learns exactly what Diggle tells Laurel, but the Canary reappears that same week. Felicity doesn’t even need a formula to do the math on that coincidence.

So it looks as though there are still going to be heroes in Starling City. Oliver would like that, she thinks, and she would like to help keep Oliver’s memory alive. She goes back to the foundry and starts upgrading her servers.

As long as she’s at it, she thinks, she might as well improve things. She’ll use different channels for each person on their network, so she can keep an eye on Roy and Diggle and maybe Laurel all at once. 

While she’s at it, there should be a channel just so they can monitor Thea; Roy can help set that up. Felicity doesn’t think she’ll ever quite forgive Thea for the role she’s played in Sara’s and Oliver’s deaths; but Oliver died to protect his sister, and Felicity sure as hell isn’t going to let that sacrifice be in vain.

She labels this part of her network “Speedy,” because Oliver would love that.

And while she’s adding things, what about a better link to Barry? If she knows Barry at all, she knows he’ll want to help protect Oliver’s city. 

She might just as well set up something for Ray’s Atom project, because he’ll never shut up and listen long enough for anyone to tell him it’s a bad idea.

Finally, she’s ready to make a phone call. “Laurel,” she says, when the person on the other end of the line answers, “if you need a base of operation, I have the perfect space for you to use.”

She follows up with calls to Roy and to Diggle and to Barry. It’s only when she’s set up a meeting for the next day that she lets herself look over to the side, to where Oliver stood when he said goodbye.

In her mind, she can see him so clearly—not just how he looked that day, but in all the moments they shared in this space. The sadder moments are the ones she can recall most easily these days, but Felicity Smoak is no stranger to loss. She knows that those happy memories, like the memories she has of singing along in the car with her father, will work their way into her consciousness with time. For now, it’s enough just to hold on to the last thing he said to her.

“I love you too,” she tells his ghost, “and so does Diggle and Roy and Laurel. So do all the people you saved. And we’re going to honor your memory.”

And then she goes back to work.  
END


End file.
